


Why?

by SherKat



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 13:49:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20601836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherKat/pseuds/SherKat
Summary: Misunderstanding + stubbornness = the end of an era





	Why?

Here we go again. What had he done _now?_

John was yelling. Accusing. Blaming. Condescending. _Oh, let's NOT go through the alphabet with this! _

The words didn't matter. They didn't make any sense. He hadn't DONE anything. 

It hurt. He was so tired. No matter what he did, it seemed he just could NOT please John. Not anymore. If he ever had done.

He remembered the good times. When it truly was the two of them against the world. It had felt like flying, as if together they could reach new heights that neither of them could reach on their own. It had been brilliant. It had been fun! It had been intoxicating! Before he knew it, that door inside of him had been opened and John Watson was on the other side. He _cared_. He _wanted_. He ... _loved_.

It had been a mistake.

Slowly, bits of his sharp corners had been chipped away, John trying to mold him into something that would fit better into the world, _their_ world, _John's_ world. He had allowed it. _Anything for John. _And it wasn't so bad, just little bits. But then the little bits became bigger bits. And even bigger bits. And it was never enough. 

He stepped outside of himself and looked, _really looked_. His core self, the true Sherlock Holmes, was rolled up in a little ball, practically hiding in a corner. And all of these extra bits, _socially correct_ bits, _pleasant to be with_ bits, _whatever John wants_ bits, had been stuck on the outside of it, like chewing gum on the sole of a shoe.

Well. Enough of that.

He sighed. He stretched himself mentally, slowly, opening up that little ball of Sherlock Holmes and shaking off the external bits as much as he could. Just like the chewing gum metaphor, they could never be _totally_ erased, but the remainder could be incorporated into the whole. A little softening. A little maturity.

He stood up, as himself, and waited for John to pause for breath. When John was looking at him expectantly, waiting for an answer or a rebuttal or an excuse, he dropped _all_ of his defenses and _let John SEE_.

And John _did_ see. He gasped with the depth of emotion he saw there. There was pain, oh, so much pain. There was disappointment. There was resignation. There was betrayal, a deep, anguishing betrayal. And beneath it all, totally unexpected, was _LOVE_. A pure, true, selfless love that ached and throbbed and cried with the truth of being ignored and unwanted. John was shocked speechless. He'd had no idea. This made all the difference in the world! Maybe they could mend this, maybe they could get it back, maybe they could go forward...

But then John saw something else. When Sherlock saw that John had seen it all, he began to build the walls back up, brick by brick, making John watch as he slowly closed off his inner self, never to be shown to the outside world again. His eyes were steel gray and rock hard. As he saw John realize what the transformation meant, how their life together was over and never to return again, he turned to walk away, saying over his shoulder,

"Goodbye, Doctor."


End file.
